Archive for the ‘misleading media’ Category

November 30, -0001

IOF is invading Nablus, again, and has imposed a curfew (read: complete lockdown; residents cannot leave their homes or walk in the streets, not for food, not for medicine, not for education or work). This comes after touted peace talks in Cairo, to discuss how the west will support Fateh and isolate and starve Hamas and the people of Gaza.

While the occupying army almost nightly invades the old city of Nablus, as well as the three refugee camps in and outside the city (Balata, Askar, and Ayn), this daytime raid and lockdown hasn’t happened here for some months.

Being away from the situation wherever it occurs is always nerve-wracking: you never know just how bad it is or isn’t; you wonder about acquaintances and civilians within.

Just yesterday Israel resumed air and land strkes on Gaza. At least 13 were killed, though they were written off in the media as militants or terrorists.

It is especially incongruous knowing that these things go on while a great majority of Israelis remain oblivious, cut off from ordinary Palestinians, driving on –as Israeli Jeff Halper of ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) put it –Israeli roads to Israeli cities or settlements (in Palestinian areas, but completely secured and sanitized), unaware of all that entails being an occupied people.

Perhaps they will hear or read about it tomorrow, a dry and inhumane propaganda piece negating the victims of IOF house invasions and demolitions and arbirtrary IOF violence which will never be prosecuted.

[later:]

3 homes were demolished in that invasion, in what Israel claims were attempts to locate wanted men (resistance fighters) but in what really amounted to another form of collective punishment] of their humanity and suffering under the occupation regime.

As predicted, the following day’s coverage did not even mention the demolition of three civilian homes, nor the resulting damage to neighbouring homes. The article did hint at some destruction, but instead stated that the demolitions occurred at “explosives factories.”

Israel Defense Forces troops on Saturday night shot dead an armed Palestinian in the Old City of Nablus.An IDF spokeswoman said troops shot at a gunman armed with an assault rifle and reported hitting him.Palestinian security officials said that the dead man was a shopkeeper who was killed and his brother wounded during an apparent attempt to shoot two gunmen in Nablus. The soldiers, disguised as Palestinians, opened fire from a building overlooking a meat and vegetable shop in the center of the town of Nablus when the two militants appeared, but hit the two civilians instead, the officials said. [the article began with “Israel Defense Forces on Saturday night shot dead an armed Palestinian… Was this the same civilian that was “hit instead”?] In a separate incident, IDF troops shot and wounded an armed Palestinian in a refugee camp near Nablus on Saturday night. Hours earlier, witnesses said IDF troops blew up several cement barriers that militants had placed in Nablus to prevent military vehicles from driving through the streets. [note the latter part of the sentence: “to prevent military vehicles from driving through the streets.” Given the nightly raids and rate of assassinations, kidnappings, and destructive IOF behaviour in Occupied West Bank and the militarily-surrounded city of Nablus, isn’t it the right of the people of Nablus to resist even with cementroadblocks? ]Nihad Masri, the acting mayor of Nablus, said a few people sustained minor injuries from the blasts in the old city. [There was also significant structural damage done to surrounding buildings, including homes whose windows were blown out, as well as to water, sewage, and electricity infrastructure. Even blocks from the blasts, homes rattled and shook cheap paint from the walls. More significantly, the proximity of the blasts, and they were loud from much further away, heightened the normal level of fear due to incursions and gunfire. But these civilian stresses are not newsworthy. What about the civilians who have suffered year after year, let alone day after day, of violent invasions, of their homes being taken over—sometimes for a mere evening, sometimes for days and weeks on end—by Israeli Occupation Forces who inevitably leave the homes in a mauled disarray of intentionally humiliating ransacking.]Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouthi said the IDF action in blowing up the barriers was “a new crime coming in the context of Israeli escalation against the Palestinian Authority and people.”The IDF spokeswoman said troops had found three explosives laboratories in Nablus this year along with numerous explosive belts being prepared for suicide bombers.“It is the capital of terrorism [read: resistance to Occupation. In February, IOF initiated “operation hot winter,” with the army shooting at civilians, arresting approximately 150 people, and (caught on film) using children as human shields.]in the West Bank. That is why it is important for the soldiers to go in there and prevent terrorists[read: instigate further resistance; further oppress a civilian population; further stray from true efforts at negotiating peace]from leaving there (to attack Israel),” she said.